the evolution of my spare bedroom, part 1

This is how my spare bedroom looked when I bought my house ~ a blank canvas. I put in new carpet throughout the house but other than that this room sat untouched for awhile. 

I knew I wanted to do something with it to make it a useful room and not just storage space, but what? For awhile the plan was to turn it into an office, because that's what you do with extra bedrooms. Right? I looked online and in magazines and compiled a bunch of ideas for the look I was going for, but I could never find the right desk or desk chair. Since those are kind of important in an office, the room continued to sit untouched.

Then one day, an idea struck. A travel room! I love to travel and have been to 7 other countries (so far). Everywhere I go I buy a frame and other decorative things and I wanted a place to display them. I decided to make the room more of a library than an office because I knew I would never actually sit at a desk even if I found the right one. And doesn't library sound so much better than office?

So I did this:

I LOVE this chaise lounge and it was really where the library idea came from. 

It took awhile to find the right ones, but I finally added these curtains to replace the awful broken blinds.

Look how perfect the colors are. The blue/grey color matches the wall color, the dark brown matches the chaise, and the 2 shades of beige go with the carpet. And I love how they soften that whole end of the room.

But there were still 2 big problems with this room:

1. I still didn't use it. I had put a bunch of stuff in it and turned it into a shrine to my travels, but it didn't serve any real purpose.

2. I do not like the wall color. I was going for grey with a hint of blue in it, and what I got looks like it should be a baby boy's nursery. But I don't like to paint so the blue has stayed.

I decided to separate this post into 2 parts so you wouldn't have to stop for food and water half way through. Check back soon for part 2 where I will show you a few things in more detail, plus some recent changes I have made!